Binge Reading

It's been a while since I wrote anything, although I have been reading an awful lot, in a fit of what I suppose Ben Myers would categorise as Binge Reading: to be precise, N.T. Wright (or Tom Wright, in his 'everyman' manifestation) and Rowan Williams. There's an irony here, because I had every opportunity to indulge this reading inclination in Australia. But, in a typically laissez-faire approach to broadening my horizons, I just sort of waited for the right moment. As it turns out, the right moment has happened here in Kyrgyzstan, where I've become friends with an ex-Ridley lecturer who happens to have a whole shelf of N.T/Tom Wright, including most of his commentaries on the New Testament, plus all of his denser theological works. I've made my way through some of the commentaries, and I have great plans to tackle his New Perspectives on Paul, but I must confess that the work that's impacted me most is Simply Christian. His writing is beautiful, precise, academic and refreshing, and unlike many Christian writers of a certain persuasion, he clearly relishes dialogue. Try this, for instance:

There are three basic ways of explaining this sense of the echo of a voice, the call to justice, the dream of a world (and all of us within it) put to rights. 

We can say, if we like, that it is indeed only a dream, a projection of childish fantasies, and that we have to get used to living in the world the way it is. Down that road we find Machiavelli and Nietzsche, the world of naked power and grabbing what you can get, the world where the only sin is to be caught. 

Or we can say, if we like, that the dream is of a different world altogether, a world where we really belong, where everything is indeed put to rights, a world into which we can escape in our dreams in the present and hope to escape one day for good - but a world which has little purchase on the present world except that people who live in this one sometimes find themselves dreaming of that one. That leaves us with the unscrupulous bullies running this world, but it consoles us with the thought that things will be better somewhere, sometimes, even if there's not very much we can do about it here and now. 

Or we can say, if we like, that the reason we have these dreams, the reason we have a sense of a memory of the echo of a voice, is that there is someone there speaking to us, whispering in our inner ear, someone who cares very much about this present world, and our present selves, and who has made us, and it, for a purpose which will indeed involve justice, things being put to rights, ourselves being put to rights, the world being rescued at last. 

Three of the great religious traditions have taken this last option, and not surprisingly, they are related; they are, as it were, second cousins. Judaism speaks of a God who made the world and built into it the passion for justice because it was his own passion. Christianity speaks of this same God having brought that passion into play (indeed, 'passion plays' in various senses are a characteristic feature of Christianity) in the life and work of Jesus of Nazareth. Islam draws on some Jewish and some Christian stories and ideas and creates a new synthesis in which the revelation of God's will in the Koran is the ideal which would put the world to rights, if only it were obeyed. There are many differences between these three traditions, but at this point they are agreed, over against other philosophies and religions: the reason we think we have heard a voice is because we have.

Simply Christian, pp8-9

So that's N.T. Wright, a truly great writer and a good man. I've also been listening to some of the innumerable lectures of his that you can find online. And then there's Rowan Williams: I mention this, because I'm desperately hoping that someone who reads this post will find it within herself or himself to buy his poetry and send it to me. In the meantime, I've been reading lots of his essays and publications online, and enjoying the outworking of his mammoth brain immensely.

I've also been reading the following: John Goldingay's commentaries on Joshua, Judges and Ruth, Gulliver's Travels, and a bucketload of Shakespeare. Someone promised me the new Jasper Fforde, and I'm hoping they deliver soon! In the meantime, lashes of QI are sufficing.